David McElroy

The most painful battles I fight are with myself.

I have occasional conflicts with other people, of course, but those are easier to resolve or to ignore. I have to live with myself all the time. I have to live with the person I’ve decided to become today, but I also have to live with various versions of myself from the past. And those differing versions of me can often fight each other for control.

I’ve decided not to be argumentative and angry with other people online. It’s been a conscious decision not to live that way anymore, even though I used to have vicious verbal battles with others, on social media and on message boards before that.

I’ve learned that this sort of vicious argument doesn’t help anyone. I’ve learned that acting in those ways often makes me ignore my own values. And I’ve learned that the toxicity I can spew in one of those battles hurts me more than it hurts the person at whom the words are directed.

But when I feel attacked by someone — as I do tonight — I want to strike back. I have a foolish need to defend my pride. And I can be insecure enough to believe I need to strike back — or else other people won’t think I’m able to prove myself right.

Part of me knows that I need to walk away from such attacks, but another part of me — the person who still thinks and feels the way I used to — is eager to strike back in self-righteous anger.

The toxic inner battle between these parts of me — the person I’ve chosen to be and the person I used to be — leaves me feeling painful inner conflict about who I really am.

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I stood in a park near my house the other day and watched people.

It was a normal scene. The new leaves of spring made the trees look green. The light came through in soft patches. People moved in both directions — talking, laughing, walking with purpose. Nothing about it would have caught anyone’s attention.

I was standing right in the middle of it.

I wasn’t pushed aside. Wasn’t ignored. Certainly wasn’t rejected.

But I didn’t feel part of the scene. I didn’t feel like those people. I somehow wasn’t one of them.

I could hear pieces of conversations as people walked past. I could tell who was relaxed and who was distracted and who was in a hurry. There was nothing unfamiliar about what I was seeing.

It felt like a scene that I was close enough to recognize, but not close enough to step into. I didn’t know how to belong there.

When I was younger, I would have reacted to that feeling differently. I would have felt some combination of frustration and anger. I would have assumed something needed to be fixed — either in me or in the world around me.

I would have tried to close the gap. I don’t feel that way anymore.

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I was waiting for my food at a restaurant early Monday morning when one of the employees came over to the counter to talk with me.

“I need to apologize to you for how I acted the other day,” she said quietly.

I was surprised, but I knew exactly what she was talking about. The last time I had seen her, she had been pretty rude. About five minutes after the place was supposed to be open that previous day — and after a couple of orders had been filled at the drive-through — I knocked on the drive-through window to let someone know the doors were still locked.

She was annoyed and she made that obvious. She and the other employees hadn’t gotten everything done before opening. There was stress or tension going on. She angrily blamed someone else at one point. She snapped at me a couple of times — as though I was somehow responsible.

I wasn’t happy about it, but I didn’t make a big deal about it. I just left and silently groused about how I had been treated.

And now — two days later — she was apologizing in a way that made it clear that she was sincere. She had clearly been bothered by the way she had acted.

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